Are You There and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead Page A

the middle of the sidewalk, she turned slowly toward the high reflective towers of the city, letting people go around her, so many people, walking, skateboarding, jogging, couples and families and single people, flowing in both directions, and seagulls gliding overhead, and horses harnessed to carriages waiting at the curb (so much life), and the odors and rich living scents, and hundreds of cars and pervasive human noise and riot, all of it continuous and—
    “Are you all right?”
    She started. A tall young man in a black jacket loomed over her. The jacket was made out of leather . She could smell it.
    “Sorry,” he said. “You looked sort of dazed.”
    Kylie turned away and walked into the street, toward the signal, her mission. Horns blared, she jerked back, dropped her locator. It skittered against the curb near one of the carriage horses. Kylie lunged for it, startling the horse, which clopped back, a hoof coming down on the locator. No! She couldn’t get close. The great head of the animal tossed, nostrils snorting, the driver shouting at her, Kylie frantic to reach her device.
    “Hey, watch it.”
    It was the man in the leather jacket. He pulled her back, then darted in himself and retrieved the device. He looked at it a moment, brow knitting. She snatched it out of his hand. The display was cracked and blank. She shook it, punched the keypad. Nothing.
    “I’m really sorry,” the man said.
    She ignored him.
    “It’s like my fault,” he said.
    She looked up. “You have no idea, no idea how bad this is.”
    He winced.
    “I don’t even have any tools,” she said, not to him.
    “Let me—”
    She walked away, but not into the street, the locator a useless thing in her hand. She wasn’t a tech. Flying the scutter and planting explosives was as technical as she got. So it was plan B, only since plan B didn’t exist it was plan Zero. Without the locator she couldn’t possibly find the Eternity Core. A horse! Jesus.
    “ Shit .”
    She sat on a stone bench near a decorative waterfall that unrolled and shone like a sheet of plastic. Her mind raced but she couldn’t formulate a workable plan B.
    A shadow moved over her legs. She looked up, squinting in the sun.
    “Hi.”
    “What do you want?” she said to the tall man in the leather jacket.
    “I thought an ice cream might cheer you up.”
    “Huh?”
    “Ice cream,” he said. “You know, ‘You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream’?”
    She stared at him. His skin was pale, his eyebrows looked sketched on with charcoal and there was a small, white scar on his nose. He was holding two waffle cones, one in each hand, the cones packed with pink ice cream. She had noticed people walking around with these things, had seen the sign.
    “I guess you don’t like strawberry,” he said.
    “I’ve never had it.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Okay, I’m lying. Now why don’t you go away. I need to think.”
    He extended his left hand. “It’s worth trying, at least once. Even on a cold day.”
    Kylie knew about ice cream. People in the old movies ate it. It made them happy.
    She took the cone.
    “Listen, can I sit down for a second?” the man said.
    She ignored him, turning the cone in her hand like the mysterious artifact it was. The man sat down anyway.
    “My name’s Toby,” he said.
    “It’s really pink,” Kylie said.
    “Yeah.” And after a minute. “You’re supposed to lick it.”
    She looked at him.
    “Like this,” he said, licking his own cone.
    “I know ,” she said. “I’m not an ignoramus.” Kylie licked her ice cream. Jesus! Her whole body lit up. “That’s—”
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s wonderful,” she said.
    “You really haven’t had ice cream before?”
    She shook her head, licking away at the cone, devouring half of it in seconds.
    “That’s incredibly far-fetched,” Toby said. “What’s your name? You want a napkin?” He pointed at her chin.
    “I’m Kylie,” she said, taking the napkin and wiping her